Blue Bell Creameries resumed selling its products in Austin on Monday, four months after it halted sales because of a listeria contamination. (RICARDO B. BRAZZIELL / AMERICAN-STATESMAN)

There they were, reaching for half-gallons and pints of Blue Bell in a near frenzy as though the ice cream wasn’t being reintroduced after a few months’ absence but was being taken away forever. I had dashed inside my neighborhood Randall’s on Monday evening to buy batteries for my daughter’s calculator and thought I would be able to dash right back out. Instead, I found myself in a long line at checkout, containers of Blue Bell ahead of me and containers of Blue Bell behind me. More customers ran in and headed toward the freezer aisle. There was chatter in the line that a nearby H-E-B had sold out of its Blue Bell supply and now, apparently, word was getting around that Randall’s still had plenty on hand. But hurry!

And soon to be available, Blue Bell said Wednesday, ice cream from Oklahoma!

And from Texas? Blue Bell’s factory in Brenham, where the company is based, won’t be up and running for a while yet.

As I stood in line, I thought of the Viewpoints editorial that we wrote in May, in which we wondered if the first recall in Blue Bell’s 108-year history and revelations of troubling managerial, sanitation and training issues would damage customers’ trust in the Texas company. Ten listeria cases in four states, including three deaths in Kansas, prompted Blue Bell to pull all of its products in April and shut down its plants for cleaning and repairs. About 3,000 employees either lost their jobs or were placed on furlough.

Sometimes you get it right when you write editorials, sometimes you get it wrong, and sometimes you should know better. It appears it was a foolish thought to think faith in Blue Bell would be shaken after its small-town country mystique turned out to be more marketing façade than reality — before the recall, how many Texans knew Blue Bell also came from factories in Alabama and Oklahoma? — and after documents exposed Blue Bell’s failure to tell federal inspectors about listeria found in its ice cream two years ago. Additional FDA documents dating to 2009 revealed Blue Bell lacked a “food safety culture,” as David Acheson, a former FDA associate commissioner of foods, told the American-Statesman in May. Acheson said the documents pointed to “ignorance or worse” about how well Blue Bell kept its facilities clean and safe.

Nope, turns out trust is easily restored. As long as it comes in vanilla or chocolate.

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